


I Have Been Waiting For These Visitors

by kattahj



Category: Bad Education (UK TV)
Genre: Ensemble Cast, Gen, Racism, Sexism, Teaching, Visitors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-09
Updated: 2014-12-09
Packaged: 2018-02-28 19:52:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,969
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2744993
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kattahj/pseuds/kattahj
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alfie has prepared his class for visiting teachers, but a mixup of countries spoils his well-laid plans.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Have Been Waiting For These Visitors

**Author's Note:**

  * For [xmarisolx](https://archiveofourown.org/users/xmarisolx/gifts).



> Thanks to roseveare for the beta!

Alfie strutted into the staffroom, sat down, and put his feet up on the table.

“I've been preparing my class for the Swiss visitors,” he said, “and I don't want to brag, but they are ready to give them a welcome fit for kings. They are prepared, they are drilled...” He clapped his hands together for emphasis. “They have the entire history of Switzerland --”

“Sweden,” Rosie said.

Alfie's hands stopped mid-clap. “What?”

“The visiting teachers. They're Swedish. Not Swiss.”

“Of course they're not,” he scoffed without conviction, and then, “They're not, are they? Oh God, what if they are?” He grabbed Fraser, who had just entered the staff room, and implored of him, “The visitors, they're Swiss, right?”

“Sure,” Fraser agreed readily.

Rosie stood up, arms crossed. “Not Swedish?”

For a split second, Fraser looked nonplussed, then he gave her a lofty smile. “Ah, you see,” he explained, “it's all the same. Like Brits and Britons.”

He was utterly stunned when both his colleagues vehemently argued that _no it wasn't_ and demanded that he tell them whether the visitors came from Sweden or Switzerland.

“The... little neutral one, with the mountains,” he said.

“That's both of them,” Alfie said.

“Well, then the one with the cuckoo clocks and the do-it-yourself furniture.”

Alfie groaned, and Rosie shook her head. “I'm asking Pickwell.”

Five minutes later, the disaster was confirmed. Alfie didn't trust Pickwell to do much, but he did trust her to know her shit. The visiting teachers were definitely Swedish, and he had to get to his class before they made utter tits of themselves.

Ignoring the ban on running in the corridors, he made it to the door just before the bell rang and skidded inside, holding onto the door handle for balance.

“I got my cuckoo clock done!” Joe said, holding it up.

“Lovely,” Alfie said, catching his breath. “Lovely... cuckoo clock, Joe. Now, you've got to hide it.”

Joe's face fell. “What?”

“Hide it. Now.” Alfie raised his voice and addressed the class with a nervous laugh: “See, thing is, as it turns out, the visitors we're having today are from Sweden. So I need you to unlearn everything you've learned about Switzerland, and learn about Sweden instead, in...” He glanced down at his watch. “Now.”

The pupils stared at him, dumbfounded.

“Come on,” he prompted. “There has to be something you know about Sweden. IKEA, Björn Borg...”

“ABBA?” Stephen suggested.

“Yes! ABBA! Wonderful. Anyone else?”

“Alexander Skarsgård,” Chantelle said, leaning forward in her chair in a way that pushed her breasts out. “He can sink his fangs into me any day.”

“Leave the commentary, but excellent example.”

Jing crossed her arms. “Sweden was first consolidated into a country during the Middle Ages, and its current borders were settled when the personal union with Norway was disbanded in 1905. Though it has an area nearly twice that of the United Kingdom, Sweden's population barely outnumbers the greater London area. Like the UK, it's a constitutional monarchy, and its king is called Carl XVI Gustaf. The official religion is Lutheran Protestantism, but Swedes are among the most secular people in the world. For large parts of the 20th century, its main exports were industrial and engineering products, but now the gaming and music sector has surpassed them.”

“Thank you!” Alfie said, beaming. “Did you all get that?”

He was met by twenty sceptical glances.

“Well, thank you anyway,” he told Jing. “Make sure to raise your hand often when they get here.”

 _//I don't see why you expect us to make up for your general incompetense,//_ she muttered under her breath.

“Yes, Jing, that's wonderful, but this is about _their_ culture, so you should probably leave yours alone for a while. Now, if you could all...”

Alfie was interrupted by a sharp knock on the door, and he made a squeaky noise in terror before opening it.

On the other side, there was a tall black man in a blue cardigan, and a gnome-like little lady with a drab grey page-cut.

“Yes?” he asked.

“We're the visiting teachers,” the woman said, in a vague RP-tinged foreign accent.

“No, you're not,” Alfie said with a slight chuckle, briefly wondering if Pickwell had put them up to this, or if it was Rosie's idea of a joke.

“I can assure you we are,” the man said. His accent sounded more like an American character in a BBC production.

“Oh.” Alfie let them in, whatever firm ground he'd started to see quickly sinking beneath him again. “So sorry, I was told you'd be from Sweden.”

The man's jaw tightened. “We _are_ from Sweden.”

“You mean there are b... uh... right. Right,” Alfie said faintly. His eyes fell on the woman's feet. She was wearing pink crocs. “So much for the accuracy of Swedish art films, eh?”

Had he actually said that out loud?

“Shall we say hello to your class?” the woman asked, looking more bewildered at his comment than anything else, thank God, though the man's frown deepened.

“Yes, yes, go ahead!” he said, waving them towards the front of the classroom. “Class, these are our Swedish visitors, would you know it?”

“Hello,” the woman said. “My name is Eva, I teach woodwork.”

“And I'm Johan,” the man said. “I teach science and maths.”

“Well, that's interesting, isn't it?” Alfie said with forced cheerfulness. “Bit of a surprise, too, since you'd think it'd be the other way around, eh?”

“Pardon?” Eva asked sharply.

“Nothing,” Alfie hurried to say. “So, class, do you have anything you'd like to ask our visitors?”

The question was met with silence. He tried to implore Jing with his eyes, but she still sat with her arms crossed, clearly unwilling to offer up any of those insights on Sweden that she had shown before. Punishing him, that's what she was doing. His gaze turned to Joe, reliable old Joe.

“Maybe we should just...” Johan started, just as Joe slowly raised his hand. “Yes? You have a question?”

“Well, uh,” Joe said, “your schools are... better... than ours... and how do you manage that?”

That was one of the pre-prepared questions, and it made the Swedish teachers look a bit puzzled.

“I'm not so sure they are,” Johan said.

“Joe, you tit, that was the Swiss!” Rem Dogg shouted, tossing his eraser at Joe's head. Joe hunched up his shoulders, but didn't duck or look back.

“Oh, yes, I remember that chart,” Stephen said, widening his eyes. “Sweden's results were _disastrous_. Worse than ours.”

The Swedish teachers looked like they had sucked lemons, and Alfie mouthed 'more questions' at the students, waving at them behind the teachers' backs to raise their hands.

Chantelle did, giving Johan her best pout and fluttering eyelashes. “If you're a science teacher, are you also in charge of the _sex_ education?”

“I am, yes,” he said slowly.

“Do you tell them anything _good_?”

“I think we should stick to asking questions about Sweden,” Alfie interrupted. “Mitchell?”

Mitchell raised his head from his desk and looked groggy enough that Alfie regretted having called on him. Even the previous expression of sleepy boredom might be better than what would come out of his mouth.

“Why do your palace guards wear clown suits? No, hang on, that's Switzerland again. Okay, are Ulrika Jonsson's tits real?”

“I beg your pardon?” Clearly Eva's English, while not quite idiomatic, encompassed the word 'tits', judging by the way her nostrils flared.

“We wouldn't know,” Johan said, taking the question somewhat calmer, though he looked thoroughly fed up at this point.

“Do you all talk like the Swedish Chef?” Rem Dogg asked, without bothering to raise his hand.

“No, we do not,” Eva said.

A grin spread over Rem Dogg's face. “Oh, so it's just you two, then?”

Stephen slowly and gracefully raised a hand in the air. “What's your favourite ABBA song?”

Okay, Alfie thought, as questions went, that was passable. It wouldn't bring any glowing praise of his students into whatever reports the teachers were making back in Sweden, but it concerned the right country and wasn't offensive, which made it head and shoulders above everything else so far.

“I never listened much to ABBA,” Eva said. “I preferred Nationalteatern.”

Johan pondered the question. “I can't say to have heard much either, but... what's the name of that sad song that Meryl Streep sings about her daughter?”

“ _Slipping Through My Fingers_ ,” Stephen said, nodding approvingly. “Not a bad choice, though of course Agnetha's version is preferable. As epic as Meryl Streep is as an actress, when it comes to ABBA, it's always best to stick to the original if at all possible. Nevertheless –“ He took a deep breath, stood up and spread out his hands. “As an homage to your country's greatest export, as well as a welcome to you, I will do my best to perform a rendition of this, your favourite. Chantelle, if you would be so kind as to back me up with the Frida part.”

Chantelle rose from her seat and licked her lips, throwing Johan a yearning look.

Without waiting for her, Stephen got started: _“Schoolbag in hand, she leaves home in the early morning...”_

It was sappy, and extravagant, and Chantelle as the backup did her disturbing best to make a maternal love song come off as soft porn, using suggestive body language whenever her knowledge of the lyrics failed her. Even so, Stephen's sincerity was unmistakeable. He put all his heart in it, and as always when that happened, the end result was fabulous.

 _“Waving goodbye with an absent-minded smiiiiiile...”_ he ended, freezing in a tableau pose.

The class, who had been unusually silent throughout the whole performance, remained so for a stretched-out moment. Then the visiting teachers started clapping, and the students followed.

Alfie exhaled. This was good. In fact, it might salvage the entire situation, if only –

_CUCK-OO! CUCK-OO!_

As the cuckooing continued, everyone stared at Joe, who blushed and stammered, “It's my cuckoo clock. Mr. Wickers made me put it away.”

“You brought a cuckoo clock?” Johan said, and there was something vaguely sympathetic, even pitying, in his tone now.

“I made it in shop class,” Joe mumbled. “But since it wasn't Swedish...”

“You _made_ it?” Eva lit up with excitement and pounded on Joe's backpack like a hawk. “And it works? Let me see.”

Hauling out the clock, which was only just finishing its final cuckoos, she clicked her tongue at the sight of the wooden bird perched in the little entrance, and the way the tiny ribbed door closed as it flew back inside.

“You made this all alone? That is wonderful work for a student your age. I am impressed. Well done!”

She kept gushing as she examined the mechanics of the little clock, and Johan joined into the admiration as well. A few of the students started craning their necks, and then leaving their seats.

Alfie sat back on the desk and watched as the room stopped being a classroom and started being a relaxed place for conversation; as Johan turned from the clock to thank Stephen again for his performance, careful not to get too close to Chantelle's advances; as Jing finally thawed and started speaking to the teachers, asking them those questions she'd withheld earlier and answering questions in return.

Sure, some of her answers concerned how displeased she was with her education, and her classmates filled in with embarrassing anecdotes about Alfie as a teacher, but the mood had still shifted. When the visitors were to return home, they might just remember this class as having some interesting people in it, rather than just a pack of deviants.

If they also remembered him as a bumbling idiot and the school as a subpar mess – well, that was just another Tuesday.


End file.
